Politics
Richard Tice Praises Commons Speaker After Zia Yusuf Criticism
Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice described Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle as “brilliant” just hours after his party colleague Zia Yusuf branded him “a coward”.
The pair appeared to be at odds over Hoyle’s approach to keeping MPs safe in the wake of the death of Ann Widdecombe.
The former Tory minister, who became a Reform spokeswoman, was found dead at her home in Devon on Thursday.
A 28-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder and counter-terrorism police are now leading the investigation.
Widdecombe’s death has led to claims by Reform politicians that not enough is being done by the authorities to keep them safe.
Yusuf, the party’s home affairs spokesman, said on Sunday parliament, the government and the police do not “care at all” about their MPs’ safety.
That sparked an angry response from Commons officials, who insisted “all MPs are offered appropriate security measures”.
It is also understood that Lindsay Hoyle spoke directly to Lee Anderson, Reform’s chief whip, about Yusuf’s remarks.
But in an angry rant on X on Monday, Yusuf hit back: “Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker of the House, has no jurisdiction over me. I am not afraid of him.
“He is a bully who did not even reply to a letter from a female Reform MP pleading for assistance with security until after I revealed it. If this is not true then I invite him to deny it on the record rather than try and bully the very people he has let down.
“Instead he briefs the press like a coward. He is a disgrace to his office.”
But in an interview with BBC’s Newsnight programme hours later, Richard Tice paid tribute to the Speaker’s attempts to protect MPs.
He said: “I had discussions with the Speaker in early January, including a letter when I said I feared something terrible and potentially fatal might happen.
“And the Speaker has been brilliant. His resolute determination about ensuring the security of all MPs is robust. But I’m afraid under him, we have found failings, we have found wantings.”
Meanwhile, Reform leader Nigel Farage has accepted an offer by home secretary Shabana Mahmood to meet the body responsible for organising security for public figures.
Reform has said it is now paying for round-the-clock security for their MPs.
Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
You thought the Henry Nowak atrocity couldn’t get any worse. You thought you’d heard every horrifying thing about this barbarous incident, when the state manhandled a dying boy who’d been stabbed and falsely branded racist. You thought Henry’s hoarse, agonised cry of ‘I can’t breathe’ was as bad as it could get. Think again. Now we discover Henry said something else, too. In his last moments, as he gagged on his own blood, he made a pained plea. ‘I am not a racist’, he whimpered.
Those five words should haunt our collective conscience. For they confirm that this kid was forced to confront not only the physical horror of his own impending death, but also the psychological horror of being tarred as racist. He was made to beg for his moral reputation alongside his mortal existence. He faced two death sentences that night: the literal death sentence of Vickrum Digwa’s knife attack, and the social death sentence of being damned as a racist. A white lad using his last breaths to bat back a malicious slur of racism – what a grim monument to the tyranny of woke racialism.
The new revelations came at the weekend, following the release of the full trial transcripts. The horror of Nowak’s death is well known. In Southampton, on the night of 3 December 2025, the 18-year-old student was stabbed four times by Digwa, a Sikh. Digwa then falsely accused Nowak of making racist jibes and attacking him. The cops arrived and took the word of the knifeman over the writhing, fatally injured teen. They cuffed Nowak. He told them he’d been stabbed. ‘I don’t think you have, mate’, came the staggeringly inhuman reply of one of the state’s brainwashed heavies.
Millions have watched the bodycam footage of Nowak’s pitiless arrest. We’ve witnessed the full savagery of state wokeness, as cops drag and cuff a teenager as he pleads ‘I can’t breathe’ (nine times) and ‘I’ve been stabbed’ (four times). What we didn’t hear, though, was what Henry cried shortly before the arrival of the police. A witness told the court he heard a young man in distress say: ‘I am not a racist.’ Picture the raw terror of the scene: Henry had been stabbed at this point – four times – yet he felt compelled to devote his flagging energy to convincing onlookers he was not racist scum.
In the trial transcripts, we see the prosecution lawyer say to the jury that, ‘even as Henry is dying’, he is saying ‘I’m not a racist’. He also told the jury about the 999 call made by Digwa’s brother, Gurpeet, who claimed: ‘He’s verbally attacked my brother racially.’ Faintly, in the background of the call, a voice can be heard. ‘No, I didn’t’, it says. That was Henry, a young lad who’d just enjoyed a night out with friends yet who now found himself fatally wounded by a knife and morally wounded by a libellous slur of racism.
What a chilling indictment of the DEI state – that a dying boy spent his final breaths defending his character against a fabricated slur rather than being comforted and cared for. That a boy was made to beg for both medical assistance and moral trust, and that he received neither until it was too late. Consider the existential weight of what Henry experienced. You’re 18 years old. Your life is slipping away. It’s the moment one’s thoughts turn to family, love, or to the terror of mortality. Yet in our cruel era of state-decreed racial suspicion, Henry’s last moments were spent litigating his moral innocence against a Kafkaesque lie.
The Nowak atrocity is a testament to the Stalinist bent of state ‘anti-racism’. It confirms that the accusation of racism is no longer a serious charge requiring rigorous proof of real bigotry, but a kind of magical spell. It has the neo-religious power to leave a man’s life in tatters. ‘Racist!’ is to the 21st-century West what ‘Witch!’ was to 17th-century Salem: a charge of heresy, of sinful thought, that might see you violently cast out from the society of the good. Like those ‘witches’ who pleaded their godliness prior to death, young Henry was made to cry ‘I’m not a racist!’ before he succumbed to his wounds.
Digwa clearly understood the spell-like power of the accusation of racism. He knew it would distract the state’s attention from his own barbarous behaviour and focus it on the alleged speechcrimes of the dying boy. And he was right. The police, wholly inculcated with the dogma of DEI, treated a white boy in the throes of death as a secular sinner to be dragged across the dirt, handcuffed, disbelieved and even mocked: ‘I don’t think you have, mate.’ Their minds fried by the authoritarian diktats of state ‘anti-racism’, they approached the bloody scene in Southampton less as cool-minded investigators of crime than as the enforcers of a cultish ideology. A brown man and a white boy? They knew instantly who was the guilty party, who was deserving of the ritualistic humiliation of a rough arrest. Henry.
We can now see the life-destroying power of the accusation of racism. We can now see that in a society riddled with identitarian anxiety, the mere whisper of that word acts as a kind of moral switch-off, blinding institutions to the evidence of their own eyes and subverting basic human empathy. To see how cruel the racial myopia of our elites can be, how divisive and dehumanising their ‘social justice’ has proven, just listen to a boy cry ‘I am not a racist’ as his precious life drains away.
Gareth Thomas MP argues that the Labour government should make an ‘ambitious new offer to the EU’, using the EU’s updated agreements with Switzerland as a precedent.
The ten-year anniversary of the EU referendum produced a wave of commentary refighting old battles – from Brexiteers’ excuses for wiping 4%-8% off our GDP, to musings about Labour’s chances at the next general election if we promise to rejoin.
Yet the debate in Westminster is lagging behind the public, who mostly see Brexit as a failure, but are not keen to re-run the divisions of Leave vs Remain. It is also disconnected from the real-world problems that we and our European neighbours face.
The reality of Brexit is that the EU is taking big decisions without the UK being in the room. Our car industry is being shut out of the EU’s ‘Made in Europe’ scheme for electric vehicles. Our steel industry, where 78% of exports go to Europe, now faces doubled EU tariffs. Our defence companies are not eligible to lead projects funded by the EU’s €150bn SAFE defence loan scheme.
This is not because the EU is trying to ‘punish’ us. This government has done the hard yards in restoring trust with our neighbours. Instead, it is the simple consequence of having left the single market, which the EU’s system is set up to protect. That’s why although the ‘reset’ has achieved some positive improvements, we need a fundamentally new deal with the EU that goes beyond incremental changes.
This ambitious partnership should have three main priorities: defending Europe in the face of Putin’s war in Ukraine and Trump’s disdain for NATO; responding to a disrupted global trading landscape dominated by the US and China; and planning for a future shaped by technologies, including AI, where Europe currently lags behind and where leading companies may not have our best interests at heart.
On security and technology, the UK has plenty to offer. We are a nuclear-weapons power with highly professional armed forces, top-tier intelligence services, and capabilities that Europe lacks. The UK attracts 39% of total venture capital in Europe, of which three quarters is in AI; we are a leader in biotech, accounting for 30% of the European VC market; and we are second globally for investment in fintech.
When it comes to trade, our position is unsustainable. Post-Brexit trade deals – worth only around 0.4% of GDP – cannot repair the damage caused by leaving the single market. Manufacturers in constituencies like Makerfield face what the OBR calls a ‘structural challenge’ from the paperwork and costs keeping us out of European supply chains. Our goods exports to the EU have fallen by 16%. In services, we no longer have mutual recognition of professional qualifications, and reduced business mobility throttles innovation.
We are close to agreeing important deals on agrifood and emissions trading. But these agreements, worth about 0.3% of GDP, are not game-changing for the economy as a whole. And the EU has made clear that our red lines on the single market, customs union and freedom of movement rule out substantially lowering trade barriers.
So what can be done? Our ambitious new offer to the EU should play to our strengths, while making a step-change in our integration with the single market. The precedent for this new trading relationship was set last year in the EU’s updated agreements with Switzerland, which is almost entirely inside the single market for goods, and partially aligns on services. In return, Switzerland pays into the EU’s regional levelling-up funds, and has an agreement on movement of people.
The UK is not Switzerland, and we could not simply copy and paste their deal. But this kind of arrangement could add up to 2% to GDP – boosting industries such as chemicals, pharmaceuticals, automotives and machinery – while giving the EU a partner with a clear stake in the single market’s success for the first time since 2016. It could preserve areas of divergence where an immediate return by the UK to the single market might be challenging, such as financial services or AI. And it would keep the UK’s ability to negotiate trade deals outside of the EU customs union.
On movement of people, this kind of deal would clearly be in UK interests. Total freedom of movement, with anyone from any EU country able to come to the UK whenever they want, whatever their circumstances, and settle here, is never going to be acceptable. But that doesn’t mean every restriction on movement between the UK and Europe should remain. It’s right that we’re negotiating an agreement to allow young people to live and work in each other’s countries for a limited period.
Scare stories about uncontrolled free movement show a complete misunderstanding of the controls that are applied to EU migration. For Switzerland – keen not to open up access to its generous benefits system – the EU deal was designed to apply only to the economically active.
EU citizens moving to Switzerland for more than three months need a residence permit and health insurance. To qualify, they must show either proof of employment, or evidence that they will not rely on benefits. The Swiss government can suspend free movement if it is shown to be causing “serious economic or social problems”.
A flexible labour force is good for UK businesses, and restoring the right to work in the EU would help Brits of all backgrounds. Lorry drivers would no longer face the 90-in-180 days limit that damages our logistics industry and leads to offshoring of jobs. Machinery manufacturers could more easily send staff for servicing and repair. Musicians in emerging British bands could tour in Europe, after years of being hammered by Brexit red tape.
The debate has moved on from 2016: polls consistently show that around three fifths of the British public would support free movement with the EU. And a referendum in Switzerland aimed at capping the population and bringing down the EU deal was voted down last month.
None of this will be easy to negotiate with our European partners, and a new Prime Minister will need to show courage in setting out renewed ambition. But staying on our current path is not an option. The Brexit referendum caused us to look inwards for a decade, as the world outside passed us by. To rise to the challenge of the decade to come, we need a new partnership with the EU – and the task of building it begins now.
By Gareth Thomas, Labour and Co-operative MP for Harrow West, and formerly Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Business and Trade.
I’m no fan of Wes Streeting. The wannabe UK prime minister, defeated before a Labour leadership contest was even declared, has been wrong on just about every issue going. But whatever you think of the former health secretary, we would surely all agree that there could be no justification for calls to harm him or his property.
Not any more. Bash Back, a militant transgender rights group, has singled Streeting out in its campaign to ‘smash transphobia’ through ‘direct harm’. The group has produced an online guide urging supporters to identify ‘transphobic’ individuals and then ‘hit them repeatedly until they desist from their activities’. Suitable targets, the chilling booklet suggests, include the ‘offices of transphobic MPs’. This is illustrated, by way of example, with a photograph of Streeting’s constituency office.
Also on Bash Back’s hit list are organisations including Sex Matters, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Free Speech Union. Activists are advised to target party conferences and ‘the property of transphobic public intellectuals’. And if there were still any doubt as to what all this is meant to inspire, the leaflet urges people to ‘choose your weapon’ above icons of a hammer, a mask and a fire extinguisher.
If such a disturbing instruction manual had been produced by a right-wing group, there would be a national outcry. Instead, it barely registers as a news story. Yes, Bash Back might be a small group of violent nutters, but their threats are worth taking seriously. Not only do they highlight the risk to particular individuals – they also shine a light on the state of our political discourse. They show that for some activists, politics is no longer about attempting to win over your opponents or convince the public of your point of view. It is not even about taking part in rowdy or disruptive demonstrations. Instead, what passes for activism today is a potentially deadly temper tantrum: the promise of violent attacks, justified by hurt feelings.
The Bash Back guide contains one particularly revealing passage:
‘All of our targets have blood on their hands. We refuse to let them wash it off in peace. Welcome to a new era of trans rage.’
This reference to ‘blood’ sums up the activists’ view that words wound, and that hateful speech is an act of violence. This view first emerged with critical race theory, but it has been taken up by trans-rights organisations that consider any challenge to gender ideology to be eliminating ‘the very idea of a transgender person’ and a denial of their ‘right to exist’. Some have now convinced themselves that actual violence is a reasonable response.
Bash Back’s literal call to arms comes complete with tips on how best to avoid getting caught. It advises changing clothes after carrying out an attack and wiping down equipment with alcohol to remove DNA. Ironically, for a group in support of men who want to prance around as ladies, this ‘trans rage’ is very testosterone-fuelled. It’s Andrew Tate (‘Bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck. Shut up bitch.’) in pastel-hued drag.
It used to be hot-headed Islamists who issued fatwas to anyone who blasphemed against their dodgy religious principles. They are still a threat, of course. But now they’ve been joined by radical left-wing activists who spew out death threats to Nigel Farage and JK Rowling, while urging everyone to ‘Be Kind’. Sadly, these are not all empty promises. Last year, Bash Back really did attack Streeting’s office. They sprayed red paint on the building and wrote ‘child killer’ on the windows. And they also disrupted a feminist conference in Brighton by smashing windows and spraying paint.
This turn to violence is not limited to trans-rights activists. In 2024, Samuel Corner was one of four Palestine Action activists who broke into the site of an Israeli-linked arms factory, causing £1.2million worth of damage. When their protest was disrupted, Corner hit a police officer with a sledgehammer, fracturing her spine. These activists’ crimes ought to have been roundly condemned, but instead Green Party leader Zack Polanski said it was ‘gut-wrenching’ to see them jailed. Labour’s John McDonnell described their subsequent prison sentences as ‘truly shocking’. Again, it is impossible to imagine a similar defence of far-right activists being given legitimacy by politicians.
In other cases of political violence, people have been killed. Police have now declared that the murder of Ann Widdecombe, a prominent member of Reform UK, is being treated as an act of terrorism, despite previously telling the public there was no evidence her killing was politically motivated. It is, of course, hard to see any other reason for a person to allegedly drive across the country with what’s been described as a ‘wooden pole’. Then there are the MPs, Jo Cox and David Amess, who were both murdered for their views. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, a court has heard that Charlie Kirk was killed by alleged shooter Tyler Robinson in part over his views on gender.
We urgently need a reckoning with this outbreak of political violence. It should not have to be stated that words – no matter how offensive, hateful or upsetting – can never justify injuring other people or taking their lives. Solving disagreements with weapons rather than through debate takes us down a truly dangerous and disturbing path.
Joanna Williams is a spiked columnist and author of How Woke Won. Follow her on Substack: cieo.substack.com
Sitting back and relaxing, or sitting at your desk, are mindless movements, but how you sit (and how long you sit) can impact your health.
Many people tend to default to certain seated positions, and one popular posture is crossing one leg over the other (seen here) – not like a pretzel, but with one leg draped over the other knee.
The position is casual enough to be done at football games yet formal enough to be done at job interviews. It’s a posture many people find themselves in for much of the day.
Physical therapists said there is nothing wrong with sitting this way, and there is a reason it’s so appealing. But there are a few things you should keep in mind if you often find yourself sitting with your legs crossed. Here’s what to know:
There’s a reason a lot of people default to the cross-legged position
According to Valerie Rogers, a physical therapist at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, this position “gives you a little bit of support.”
“So that when you go and lean forward, as you’re looking at a computer or something like that, you don’t have to use quite as many muscles to still keep you upright,” Rogers said.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is a less active posture than simply just sitting up straight with your feet on the ground, she noted.
If you sit this way consistently and for long periods of time, it could “eventually make your postural muscles not quite as strong,” Rogers explained. “But you can still sit in those positions with an engaged posture, too. So, it kind of works both ways.”
If you do it all the time, you may notice some muscle imbalances
When you repeatedly sit cross-legged, you can create a bit of a pelvic imbalance, said Ethan Triplett, a physical therapist with Orlando Health in Florida.
“When you cross your legs, your body is naturally going to go into a little bit more of a slouched posture all the way up from the back, even up into the neck,” Triplett explained. “Putting one foot over top, you can obviously see how that’s going to push one pelvis side up compared to the other, and so that’s going to put a little bit of different pressure on your glutes.”
If you are constantly tilting to one side, your body has to compensate, he added.
“So, a lot of times, people will start to see that muscular discomfort, which is why we often tell people to change [their position] pretty frequently,” Triplett noted.
FreshSplash via Getty Images
This position can temporarily impact your blood pressure, but it’s not a concern overall
“There’s not a ton of robust research looking at this – what we do know is there is a temporary rise in blood pressure,” said Alex Hill, a pelvic health and oncology physical therapist and owner of OncoPelvic PT in Florida.
It happens in the moment when you have your legs crossed, which is why doctors and nurses have you put your feet flat on the floor when taking your blood pressure in healthcare settings, Hill added.
“But … it’s not that having your legs crossed every day is going to cause hypertension or cause a chronic blood pressure issue,” Hill said.
Sitting in a legs-crossed position for extended periods is particularly not recommended for those who have lymphedema.
“There are some considerations, also with crossing your legs that could increase the pressure on the lymphatic and the blood vessels, so it can temporarily reduce fluid drainage efficiency,” Hill said. “With lymphedema, it is recommended to avoid crossing the legs for extended periods of time because it does occlude those vessels for that temporary time period.”
In the end, staying in any one position for too long is damaging
“The phrase that I always tell my patients is, ‘your best posture is your next posture,’” Triplett said. Posture problems can be a big contributor for discomfort and pain.
“I don’t think sitting in any one position more than 30 minutes is good for the body,” said Ryan Galvin, a physical therapist with UofL Health in Kentucky.
Galvin recommends that folks set a timer for every 30 minutes or so to remind themselves to get up and move around.
“The reason you want to create variability in your positions and your postures is so your body doesn’t get accustomed to one position and mold into that one position,” Galvin noted.
This is how “tech neck,” a forward head posture, happens in people who look down at computers or phones a lot, he said.
“If you spend too much time in one position repetitively, your body ends up creating a new posture,” Galvin said.
It’s easy to forget to get up and move if you work a desk job or are tuned into a particularly good Netflix binge, but if you aren’t getting up to move, it can become problematic, no matter how you’re sitting.
“Those muscles can get weak, they can get tight, including those hip flexors, your hamstrings, your core stabilisers, and so over time that can lead to issues,” Hill said. “But sitting one day with your legs crossed isn’t the end of the world.”
BBC presenter Nick Robinson clashed with Robert Jenrick over his claims that the government is failing to give Nigel Farage the protection he needs.
The pair went head-to-head after it emerged the Reform UK leader rejected the same taxpayer-funded protection package given to Tory leader Kemi Badenoch when he was offered it.
That would have seen him receive a bodyguard, a car and a trained driver at all times.
However, Farage insisted it was not enough to protect him from the threats he faces and turned it down.
He is now set to have a meeting with the Royal and VIP Executive Committee (RAVEC), an independent body which assesses the threat posed to high-profile people, to discuss his concerns.
The row has erupted in the wake of the alleged murder of Ann Widdecombe, the former Tory minister who became a Reform spokeswoman.
A 28-year-old man has been arrested and counter-terror police are now leading the investigation.
On Radio 4′s Today programme, Jenrick, Reform’s Treasury spokesman, accused the government of “downgrading” the protection given to Farage after he became an MP in 2024.
“He initially was given a comprehensive plan that was commensurate with the threat that he faced,” he said.
“Then that was downgraded. I don’t know why, maybe that will be explained to Nigel when he meets the committee. But that feels to me to have been very unwise, to say the least.”
He added: “Sadly this is a man who is under great threat and think the authorities are just very blase about that, as are parts of the media.
“Just the other day parts of the media were happy to publish photographs which made it very easy to know where his daughter lived [and] his homes.”
But Robinson told him: “Nigel Farage posed in front of his own homes for the cameras repeatedly.”
Jenrick insisted that Reform MPs face a greater threat than other politicians because they “raise issues that many mainstream politicians shy away from”.
He said: “If you talk about Islamist extremism, as I do and Nigel Farage has done for many years, you are likely to be in considerably more danger than those who don’t.”
Robinson hit back: “You can’t say that Mr Jenrick, there’s no evidence for that at all. There’s a threat from the far right in this country. Ask Diane Abbott, if she was in that seat, ask the family of Jo Cox. There are people on all sides of politics who have become a target.”
He went on: “In the last few minutes, you have attacked the media, you’ve attacked the police, you’ve attacked the government, you’ve attacked the [Commons] Speaker, you’ve attacked the establishment who apparently want someone dead in the Reform party.
“What do you say to those who say ’yes, this is a terrible tragedy what happened to Ann Widdecombe, we don’t actually know why she was murdered yet, we don’t even know if she was murdered because of her connection with Reform UK. It could be. None of this is clear until the police complete their investigation.
“But it does suit you and Nigel Farage to change the subject nationally from the fact that Mr Farage took a vast donation of £5 million from someone living abroad and he wishes to connect that with his security when in fact it has nothing to do with it at all, it’s about a breach of parliamentary rules.”
Jenrick then accused Robinson of reading off “a pre-scripted final question to me” – something the presenter angrily denied.
The Reform MP went on: “The point I am making is that the government chose not to give Nigel Farage the security he needed. They now have, as a result of Ann Widdecombe’s appalling murder, offered him a meeting.
“The home secretary could have offered him that meeting a year ago, two years ago, she chose not to. That is playing politics with the safety of politicians and I suspect that’s because they don’t like the views that Reform politicians take forward.”
Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
Politics
The House | To fund the investment in national security we need, Burnham should steal our defence bonds policy
HMS Prince of Wales departs Portsmouth en route to join in NATO exercises in 2024 (Mark Dillen/Alamy)
3 min read
The government has finally released its long-awaited Defence Investment Plan (DIP), after 14 months of delay. It was, as expected, too little and too late.
With Vladimir Putin waging war in Europe and an unreliable Donald Trump in the White House eroding the essential alliances that underpin our security, we must be upfront with the public about the threats facing Britain. The Prime Minister himself has warned that Russia could launch an attack against Nato by 2030. In light of these unprecedented threats, we urgently need to invest in our national security. We need to give confidence to our Nato allies and international partners that we are serious about our collective defence and national resilience.
The resignation of the former defence secretary John Healey – in frustration at the settlement on offer from the Treasury – shone a harsh spotlight on the government’s struggle to fund our armed forces, following years of cuts by the Conservatives.
Despite Dan Jarvis, his replacement as Defence Secretary, winning an additional £1.5bn from the Treasury, there is still an enormous funding gap that needs to be filled by the prime minister in waiting, Andy Burnham. Of the £15bn uplift secured in the DIP – itself only just over half of the £28bn black hole outlined by military chiefs – £4.7bn is currently entirely unfunded.
As a country, we need to be moving at pace urgently to inject finance into our national security, not dragging our feet. The Liberal Democrats have a clear plan to do this: by issuing ‘defence bonds’ to generate an additional £20bn over two years, hypothecated to spending on capital investment in our military. It’s an idea that Burnham is reportedly considering – and which I would encourage him to implement as a priority once over the threshold of No 10.
Our vision for defence bonds would see them back British industry, create jobs and foster innovation. They would also allow the public to have a genuine stake in our collective national security. This investment would supercharge our defence industry, all while sticking to the government’s fiscal rules, to which Burnham has committed. It would also allow us to support research and development to further stimulate our economy and generate growth.
There is strong evidence to support the value of defence bonds. Take ‘green gilts’, issued to raise money for capital investment with an environmental benefit in 2021. The very first sale raised £10bn.
The DIP has shown that the current government does not have a credible plan to fund defence
We need to be this ambitious for our defence industry. Critically, we see defence bonds as part of a funding mix for defence. That mix would also include working with our international allies to generate innovative collective financing models – including Liberal Democrat calls for a European Rearmament Bank – and negotiating access to the EU’s €150bn Security Action for Europe (Safe) programme.
We would also scrap the government’s self-defeating and anti-growth red lines on Europe – and open negotiations to join the EU’s single market to stimulate the growth we desperately need. Growing the economy is how we can generate the funding necessary for our defence needs.
The DIP has shown that the current government does not have a credible plan to fund defence. That sends all the wrong signals to industry – and to our allies and adversaries alike.
When Healey resigned, he said Keir Starmer was “unable” and the Treasury was “unwilling” to keep our country safe. This is unacceptable.
The Conservatives hollowed out our armed forces and Starmer failed to fund them. Burnham must now ensure any government’s first priority: to keep our country safe. Issuing defence bonds is an obvious first step towards funding our armed forces properly.
James MacCleary is Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes and defence spokesperson
Right now, there’s an “exceptional” risk of wildfires in parts of the UK (especially the sunnier South of England and the lower parts of the Midlands).
Hot, dry conditions, influenced by the back-to-back heatwaves we’ve experienced so far, are continuing into the longest period of unusually hot weather in years.
That means that something as simple as a glass bottle or embers that travelled on the wind risk setting spaces like your garden aflame, the London Fire Brigade (LFB) said on its site.
A National Fire Chiefs Council spokesperson told the BBC: “When the weather stays hot and dry, it only takes one spark to start a wildfire. What can begin as a small fire can spread incredibly quickly, putting people, homes, wildlife and our countryside at risk.”
One of the ways the LFB recommends reducing this risk is by getting rid of combustible materials (things that can easily catch fire) in your backyard.
This includes keeping your grass below a certain height.
Keep your grass below 7cm during periods of high wildfire risk
“By removing anything flammable, like dry grass or piles of rubbish, you’re removing fuel for any wildfires,” the LFB explained.
Keeping your grass below 7cm can help with that, as can removing dead leaves from areas like your gutters, positioning things like sheds and garden furniture away from your home, and cutting back trees and shrubs near your house.
Ensuring your garden is watered can help, too, but be aware that many parts of the UK are currently facing hosepipe bans.
“If a hosepipe ban is in place, consider using water butts or wastewater from your home to water your garden,” the LFB added.
Where possible, try creating “firebreaks” around your property
This involves clearing a 2-3cm space around every side of your home and garden to reduce the chances of fire spreading.
Anything else? Yes. Compost heaps can be a fire hazard in gardens, so it’s best to keep them away from buildings and structures like sheds.
Keep them moist and use a watering can if you’re worried it’s running dry.
A “good balance” of green (plants, kitchen scraps, natural fibres, and leafy garden waste) and brown (like cardboard and shredded woody prunings) materials helps too, as does turning the heap over often.
The bill for the Hillsborough Law is set to be approved by MPs in the Commons today more than three decades after the disaster.
The long-awaited legislation is expected to become law by the autumn, marking a major victory for campaigners including incoming prime minister Andy Burnham.
Here’s what you need to know about the law and why it’s so significant.
What Happened At Hillsborough?
Ninety-seven Liverpool fans died as a result of the tragedy at Hillsborough stadium on April 15, 1989, during the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.
Hundreds more were injured as overcrowding caused a deadly crush in the Leppings Lane end of the ground.
It remains the UK’s worst sporting disaster in history.
Victims’ families fought for decades to uncover the truth about what caused the tragedy, after Liverpool fans were wrongly blamed for what happened.
However, their efforts were hampered by the police, who blamed the fans and held back evidence of their own failings.
What Is The Hillsborough Law?
Officially known as the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, the Hillsborough Law will make it a legal duty for public officials to tell the truth to inquiries and investigations.
Prime minister Keir Starmer has welcomed the “landmark law” as a tribute to campaigners who spent decades “fighting to get justice for their loved ones”.
“This will make sure nobody else has to suffer like they did. I am proud to bring back this Bill, delivering a law not just for the 97, but a law for everyone,” he said.
Why Has It Taken So Long?
The authorities spent decades unfairly blaming the fans for the incident.
It was 27 years before a court finally ruled in 2016 that those who died were unlawfully killed and that the fans caught in the crush were not responsible.
But campaigners wanted accountability, too.
So far, only one senior police officer in charge at Hillsborough, David Duckenfield, has been fined £6,500 for a health and safety offence.
Meanwhile, a police misconduct investigation run by the Independent Office for Police Conduct and operating since 2012 concluded last December – but ruled no one would be held accountable.
Some of the most prominent campaigners and officers involved have passed away in the 36 years since the disaster without ever seeing justice.
The Major Sticking Point
The original proposals in the Hillsborough Law gave intelligence agencies the right to decide whether to co-operate with public inquiries.
They could opt out of giving evidence if they thought it would pose a major national security risk, a caveat which infuriated campaigners.
Families bereaved by the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing wrote to Starmer in January saying MI5 should not be exempt.
A public inquiry found the intelligence agency had not offered an “accurate picture” about the information it held on the suicide bomber.
It’s thought ministers have now agreed not grant the intelligence services any exemptions in order to get the legislation through.
Why Is It Coming In Now?
Starmer originally promised to introduce the law by the anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster in April 2025.
But further disagreements over how far it would require intelligence services to comply with a proposed legal “duty of candour” on public bodies meant it was withdrawn.
To push it through in the last week of his premiership, Starmer helped to weaken the opt-outs for authorities.
Downing Street’s push to get the legislation over the line at the last minute of Starmer’s time in office will be seen as an effort to shore up his own legacy.
What Does Andy Burnham Think of The Law?
Burnham – who will become prime minister next Monday – will also make his first statement in the Commons since returning to parliament as the Makerfield MP on the legislation.
The incoming prime minister introduced a Hillsborough law in 2017, but it was not picked up by the then-Tory government.
The former Greater Manchester mayor has been an avid supporter of the victims, and joined them in criticising Starmer’s bill for not going far enough.
Burnham welcomed the incoming bill on Monday, writing in the Liverpool Echo: “If an entire city could be ignored for two decades while telling the truth about the deaths of its own people, what other communities have gone unheard? Which voices have been overlooked simply because they lacked power?
“For me, this has always been about changing that. It is why I believe we must continue to redistribute power, strengthen our towns and cities, and build a Britain where every community is treated with equal respect and where, in the face of injustice, nobody walks alone.”
Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
Tom Holland has admitted he had a bit of a “humbling experience” when he tried to get together with football icon Erling Haaland.
On Monday, the Bafta winner paid a visit to The Tonight Show, where, naturally, talk quickly turned to the World Cup.
“It’s a huge deal for us,” the British actor said, of England qualifying for the semi-finals. “And it really does feel like something is in the air right now. Sometimes in life I just get a feeling, and I have that feeling right now, Jimmy.”
During this year’s World Cup, Norway’s Erling Haaland has become one of the most talked-about players in the world, with host Jimmy Fallon putting Tom on the spot about whether rumours that the Spider-Man actor once slid into the footballer’s DMs were true.
“Yes,” Tom confessed. “And I tell you what, that is the exact type of humbling experience that is important for actors.
“Like, ‘I’ll text him, I’ll take him for dinner’. Not even a response. Not an excuse, not ‘I’m busy tonight, I’m playing football’. Nada.”
Explaining exactly what went down, he continued: “I was at Monaco, I was watching Lewis [Hamilton] race, and I saw [Erling Haaland] in a hospitality suite across from me.
“And I just thought I’d shoot my shot. [So, I] sent him a text. I never imagined I’d talk about it on live television, but here we are!”
When Jimmy asked Tom if the invitation was still open, he responded: “I don’t think he’d have dinner with me after the other day.”
“He’s incredible,” Tom concluded. “He’s an absolute legend.”
Erling previously shared his side of the story during an interview on the Norwegian series A-laget, Norway’s equivalent to The Assembly.
“This is a bit embarrassing, to be completely honest,” Erling said. “We were in Monaco at the Formula 1, and then I got a message. I don’t watch movies much, so I have no idea who people are. There was one asking if we could go out for dinner, but I’d never seen him, so I didn’t bother to answer. I didn’t want to answer an unknown person.”
The Marvel performer is currently gearing up for the release of his new movie The Odyssey, which also features his wife and Spider-Man co-star Zendaya.
Also in the star-studded cast are Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong’o, Charlize Theron, Robert Pattinson and Matt Damon, who takes the lead as Tom’s on-screen father, Odysseus.
Illustration by Tracy Worrall
4 min read
Lessons in political science. This week: post
The letter the constituent received ended, as they often do, with some polite boilerplate. “Please feel free to contact me with other matters that are of importance to you. I am honored to serve as your representative in the US Congress”.
But then it continued, in a way these letters usually don’t: “I think you’re an asshole.”
Congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson was forced to apologise, saying that she didn’t know how that happened or who was responsible; if she ever found out, she never made it public. But it is a rare MP or staffer who has not wanted to add a similar parting shot occasionally.
It used to be letters: almost five million pieces of post arrived at Westminster in 2005; that had fallen to just over 1.2 million by 2019 and is now below the million mark every year. But email has grown to replace it, which I suspect does little to reduce the asshole coefficient.
Given how resource intensive it is, we know surprisingly little about MP-constituent post. There have been few efforts to follow in the footsteps of Frances Morrell’s 1977 study of postbags or Richard Rawlings’ detailed analysis of MPs’ casework from 1990 – although a fascinating article just published in the Historical Journal has examined some of the existing archival collections of MPs post.
One innovation is what are known as correspondence or audit studies, a very common way to check for bias. You send off a bunch of otherwise identical CVs or letters to companies and you see if those from John get more positive replies than those from Joan, or indeed those from Mohammed. When some academics tried something similar with MPs a few years ago, there was a big row; the Speaker got involved, claiming it might be a contempt of the House.
I had assumed that warning would be the end of such studies of Westminster. No one wants to end up in chokey, just to get an article in The British Journal of Political Science.
Hence my surprise to see a new study is forthcoming. Turns out this new one was carried out before the last row, with the fieldwork undertaken in 2018-19. Its publication in 2026 is a bit of an indictment on academic lead times but should at least stop them having their collars felt.
Even more of a defence is that this time no fakery was involved at all. In a clever methodological innovation, this study recruited students to send letters to MPs. These were real constituents, participating voluntarily, and the study ensured that the messages sent reflected their genuine views. The only difference is that the research study was able to track them.
Given how resource intensive it is, we know surprisingly little about MP-constituent post
The letters were on policy, covering a range of different issues: Brexit, student finance, immigration. The main findings are all null (of one result, the authors say the “estimated coefficient on the constituent-party congruence treatment is non-significant, wrongly signed, and close to zero”, which is a null result in its purest form). There was no difference between the rates of reply, or their content, depending on “constituent congruence”, that is whether the writer agreed with the MP or not. Lest you think this is obvious, US studies find the opposite.
There was similarly no difference between loyalists and rebels on particular issues. Marginality didn’t seem to matter either. This is all, in many ways, actually very positive: constituents are getting equal treatment, whatever their views.
The secondary finding is, to me, more interesting. Holding responses came from 63 per cent of MPs, but a substantive response came from just 46 per cent of those contacted. This was lower than I was expecting. Perhaps the policy-related nature of the questions lowered the extent to which MPs felt a response was required (would casework get a higher response?); perhaps the relatively short nature of the emails made some MPs treat them as campaign group generated? Having just been writing to MPs myself for something else, I’m at least confident the holding replies these days would be close to 100 per cent.
At least no one replied: I think you’re an asshole.
Further reading: K Kowol and R Toye, The Management of British MPs’ Postbags and Politician-Voter Relations in the Democratic Age, The Historical Journal (2026); D Bischof et al, When Legislators Do Not Differentiate: A Field Experiment on British MPs’ Responses to Constituency Policy Queries, British Journal of Political Science (2026)
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